Kevin Sullivan - The Longest Winter

‘You have to come back,’ he told Jusuf.

‘What’s up?’

Alija glanced at Milena and waited.

‘Go to the bedroom,’ Jusuf said, barely looking at her.

She did as she was told.

‘Otes,’ Alija whispered when Milena had retreated, closing the door behind her.

Jusuf returned to the bedroom to put on his shirt and jacket. Milena followed him out when he was dressed.

‘I’ll see you at the bar,’ he told her. ‘Don’t know when.’ He went out to the stairway behind Alija.

Rumour had it that Otes might fall to the Rebels within days, leaving the city open to a ground attack from the west.

‘Why not stay here?’ Brad said.

They stood in the lobby of the Holiday Inn, tiles broken on the muddy concrete floor, gusts of wind playing on the cracked glass. Terry was relieved to be inside a building, even a building like this. It was like a giant refrigerator, a science-fiction set, with the inside walls made of dark, peeling plaster, and huge windows smashed and covered with tarpaulin. There was a reception desk, though, which appeared more or less normal and there were people standing around looking relaxed.

She had blown her arrival, but at least she was in the city centre. They hadn’t sent her back on the next plane.

From the Land Rover she had peered through reinforced glass at wrecked buildings, some nearly buried in snow, black oblongs on the scarred facades where windows used to be; there were women and children in greatcoats and headscarves pulling water containers across ice on wooden sleds; there were sniper barricades at the road intersections, big steel containers; everywhere there was smashed glass and scorched concrete.

‘The phones are down, so you won’t be able to call your people,’ Brad told her when they reached the reception desk.

She looked lost. ‘You’ll need time to get hold of them,’ he added more gently.

‘Check in for the night,’ Anna said. ‘Someone here might be able to help you find your group.’

Terry looked from one to the other. She was grateful and she wanted to tell them that, but she couldn’t find the words. She was generally reticent; expressing feelings didn’t come easily to her. There was an awkward silence.

Brad shrugged and said, ‘I have to work.’ He began to walk away.

‘I’m going to have lunch in ten minutes,’ Anna said. ‘The restaurant’s up there.’ She pointed to a door near the first of the grid-like balconies rising through the bleak atrium. ‘Come and join me.’

Terry watched Anna leave. She noted the black trainers and tight blue jeans. Anna had removed her down anorak to reveal a blue flak jacket.

‘Can I have a room for the night?’ she asked the middle-aged woman who stood behind the reception desk. The woman had been listening to their conversation. Terry had watched her out of the corner of her eye while she was talking to Brad and Anna.

The receptionist’s eyes were magnified by thick reading glasses attached to a fine chain round her neck. ‘What is the name of your organisation?’ she asked in slightly accented English, well modulated, like a language teacher.

Her grey hair was tied back in a bun.

‘I work for a London charity called the Medical Action Group.’

The woman gave Terry a small, unimpressed smile and asked, ‘You will pay in cash?’

‘How much is it?’

‘Eighty-two dollars, full pension.’

She had expected to be speaking to another physician about a patient’s condition. Arrangements were supposed to have been made. Now she was asking about room rates. This annoyed her.

She nodded and signed the form that the receptionist placed in front of her. The woman selected a key and handed it to Terry. Then she said, ‘Passport please.’

Terry surrendered her passport.

‘I will return it to you after lunch.’ The woman smiled.

It was just twenty minutes since the Transall had plummeted through winter clouds and landed between armies. Nothing was going according to plan.

‘You will have to take the stairs,’ the woman said. ‘There is no electricity. The lift is not working.’

She walked across the cavernous lobby, climbed the back stairs to the third floor and found her room.

The window had been broken. Shards of glass still clung to the steel frame. The opening was covered by thick plastic tarpaulin. Much of the wall behind the two beds had been peppered by what she took to be shrapnel; there were shallow, elongated gashes in the plaster. The painting above the dressing table facing one of the twin beds was hanging upside down.

Otherwise, nothing was amiss. The two single beds were neatly made. The furniture was standard business-hotel issue.

She went into the bathroom and turned on the shower, but no water came out of the nozzle. She tried the taps at the end of the bath: dry. Nor did water come from either of the taps above the wash basin.

She went back into the bedroom and sat on the bed.

The airport business weighed on her thoughts. Perhaps she’d been wrong to accept a lift. She should have waited. What if someone had made that journey, past those barricades, to fetch her? What if the person who had come to collect her had driven over a mine, or had been shot by a sniper? It would be her fault – because she hadn’t waited. She hadn’t been where she was supposed to be. She experienced a wave of hopelessness, a huge breaker that hammered the tottering framework of doubt and insecurity. Perhaps the Medical Action Group had been negligent in sending her here, but they were hardly to blame. She’d put up her hand and volunteered and she didn’t know why, except for the fact that her life was so difficult, even something as uncertain as this had promised a way out. She was angry with herself because she knew very well that this mission must succeed. A life was at stake. The little boy she’d come to collect needed every ounce of Terry’s professional expertise. Self-doubt, she thought, is a weakness that people in her business could not indulge.

Terry was good at her job; she was less good at the other things in her life, like getting on with colleagues, or bonding with strangers on a plane, or making relationships work. This last thought made her chest tighten. She felt the muscles contract more suddenly and more unpleasantly than when she’d made her unseemly dash from the Movement Control Office behind Brad. She was very afraid to dwell at any length on the failure of her marriage. The pain from that wound had not gone away.

She did something she hadn’t done for years. She picked up a book of matches from an ashtray on the bedside table and opened it. About half of the paper stems had already been torn off. She’d been told to bring Marlboro, one or two cartons at least. Cigarettes were more valuable than cash here. She took one of the cartons from her holdall, tore it open, extracted a packet, unwrapped it and pulled out a cigarette.

She lit the cigarette and drew on it before she had time to change her mind. It made her feel dizzy and sick. She lay back on the pillows and puffed, gazing round the room, watching coils of thin smoke rise up to the beige ceiling.

The cigarette left an acrid taste in her mouth and she couldn’t brush her teeth because there was no water. She put the packet in her trousers pocket along with the matches and went downstairs to the restaurant.

Terry walked past three long tables that stretched from one end of the restaurant to the other; there were several smaller tables in two corners. She felt self-conscious. There were forty or so people in the room, all dressed in a kind of uniform: army boots, jeans and warm sweaters, with arctic jackets over the backs of chairs. Terry noticed flak jackets leaning up against table legs. Her own outfit consisted of wool trousers, winter boots not designed to splash through mud, a sweater with a pattern on it and a silk scarf. She knew she didn’t fit in.